The invention relates to sensing devices, and more particularly to disposable sensing devices for use in bioprocess components.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are widely employed for automatic identification of objects (e.g. animals, garments, etc.) and detection of unauthorized opening of containers. The attractiveness of conventional passive RFID tags comes from their low cost. For sensing applications, RFID sensors often require a battery. The use of battery in the RFID sensors leads to increases in size of the sensors and demands more power for the operation of the sensors. Hence, the RFID sensors lose their attractiveness as passive sensors.
Typically pharmaceutical manufacturing plants require cleaning of the entire plant after manufacturing of each batch of pharmaceuticals. Due to the huge size of such plants, these plants require large amount of water for cleaning. In addition, due to the high risk of contamination involved, these plants are sterilized using steam. This requires another plant to produce steam for steam sterilization. Therefore, for small batch sizes it is not very economical to use large size plants that require extensive cleaning. Accordingly, small bioprocess plants are desirable. Further, in order to avoid cleaning of these plans, it is desirable to have small-scale disposable plants. Disposable sensors are necessary to operate and control such disposable plants.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide sensor assembly to go with such disposable systems.